As I peered up between my legs at my ob-gyn, I learned that I couldn’t attend my grandmother’s funeral.

“You’re four centimeters dilated,” she told me.

“So I shouldn’t go to New Jersey on Monday then?” I asked.

“You probably shouldn’t travel out of state,” she responded.

She was right. My younger son was born that afternoon. Between not attending the funeral and the chaos of a new baby, I never told my older son about my grandmother’s death. He had only met her once, briefly, so it would have met little to him anyway.

But the whole thing made me realize how urgent it was to talk to him about death. That’s in part because my other grandmother is getting up in years. My older son (nicknamed Sprout) has met “Grammy” several times and knows her well enough. While her passing may be years away, there’s no way to know. Needless to say, I didn’t want finding out about her death to be his introduction to the topic.

But I had no idea where to start.

The Idea of Death

While there are plenty of books, I didn’t want to dive into the subject via the death of pets or people yet. I wanted to at least establish a basic foundation. After all, there are plenty of kids who mistakenly get the idea that death is like sleep, only forever. I also wanted death to be grounded in physical, real-life experience. His imagination is so vivid that the line between reality and fantasy is already blurred.

Fortunately, opportunities to discuss tough topics present themselves just when you need them. Or maybe I was simply relieved at not having to avoid the topic anymore.

The first opportunity arose when we found a spider in its web that wasn’t moving. When Sprout asked, “What’s that?” I simply stated, “I think it’s dead.” As I expected, he followed it up with, “Why?”

I explained that sometimes living things get sick and their bodies don’t work anymore. That led to a discussion about what it means for something to be living. We did a little back-and-forth game of me throwing out a thing and him guessing if it was alive or not, including ants, rocks and trees.

Where are the parents?

The next big chance for discussion came in the form of the dreaded Disney question – where are the hero’s parents? Sitting on our bed after bath time, my son looked at the clownfish on his towel and said, “It’s like Nemo.” Then he looked up at me with his huge blue eyes and asked, “Where’s Nemo’s mommy?” Considering he had seen the movie six months earlier, the question caught me by surprise.

Nonetheless, I sighed and went for it. “She died, honey. That’s why Daddy and I thought the beginning of the movie was really sad.” He looked at me for a moment and said, “Oh.” A second later, he declared, “I’m a little fishie!” and that was that. I was just glad he asked about Finding Nemo rather than Frozen. While the introduction to Finding Nemo is more evocative, the idea of fish – even parent fish – dying is easier than humans.

When Nature Does the Talking

Both of those were abstract compared to the graphic depiction of death we witnessed a few weeks ago. This was man versus nature. We had gone to “watch trains” from a nearby pedestrian bridge for the first time in a good long while. Half a deer lay between  the train tracks and where we were on the bridge. Its head was perfectly preserved, its empty eyes staring forward. Its legs were there, pale and folded as if it was sleeping.

But most of its torso was gone. There was just a mangled, bloody mess. Looking down at it, he asked,”What happened?” I replied, “I’m not sure, but I think a train hit it. It got really hurt and then its body stopped working.” There were a few more questions, but mainly silent contemplation. I only answered what he asked – no less, no more. The longer I’m a parent, the more important I realize these silences are.

The Really Hard Conversations

Since then, we’ve had a few more exchanges, most of them in passing. Each one adds a little more to his understanding.

So far, we’ve avoided the two really big questions: if he will die one day and if his parents will die. Those are going to be some more difficult conversations.

But even when that day comes, I think we’ve given him good tools for understanding it. The fact that we’re treated it as something that happens naturally will lessen some of the scarier aspects. Starting with animals and the circle of life normalizes it.

When we do get beyond the biological, my husband’s and my own comfort with mortality will help us address it in a compassionate, straight-forward manner. Being a Christian who has spent a lot of time contemplating an unconventional view of heaven helps. It’s easier to explain a topic to a kid when you’ve wrestled with it extensively yourself.

The hardest part is the fact that death is the hardest on the people who are left behind. When I fear my own death, I do so because I would be leaving my children without a mom. As one of Sprout’s books says, “All families are sad when they lose someone they love.”

I want to teach my kids how to cope through this pain and be there for others experiencing it. From what I’ve learned, the very act of being there and listening is the best thing you can do. I want to teach my kids that skill and level of compassion. Knowing I can’t do it on my own, I take solace in the fact that my sister-in-law is an oncology nurse. I can’t imagine a better preparation for talking about death than treating people with cancer every single day with grace and kindness.

Just as having a great-grandparent pass will most likely be Sprout’s first personal experience with death, it was mine as well. I remember attending my great-grandmother’s funeral; I was both awkward and bored. But I wasn’t scared. I credit my parents for being truthful and straight-forward with me. I hope I can give the same to my kids when the time finally comes.

For more on some of my parenting struggles, be sure to read The ‘But Why?’ Phase. For more truthful tales of parenting, be sure to follow us on Facebook.